Charging at Work - Your Experience/Setup

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kirkhilles

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 19, 2017
Messages
58
Hi, I've had my Leaf about a month now and have enough range during warmer weather to go to and from work with 11 miles remaining. Its crazy that my car sits near power for 8 hours while it slowly drains and winter time will likely push it to where I don't have enough power to get to and from home.

What is everyone's work charging situation? What happened the first time? Did you ask your boss? What did he/she say? Were dedicated L2 stations setup? Are you hooking up to an outside outlet?

I asked my boss about it the other day and given the fact that while he acts all nice and is "just one of the guys", he really has zero interest in anything that doesn't benefit HIM. Since there's no tax breaks or bragging factor for him, he pretty much dismissed me and said things like:

"Don't you have enough range to get to and from work???"

I also suggested that there's a parking deck (where we used to park) where for $60/month (would be thrilled if he could even be willing to chip in $20/month just as a goodwill gesture). I could park there and there's a Chargepoint station there. Well, again, he not only didn't care but had to show off his "boss" skills and so said "there's nothing we can do". Thanks Boss. How much money am I generating for the company again?

Well, you know what? This is IMPORTANT to me, so this morning I'm going to do things MY way. I bought a 10 gauge, quality 50 foot extension cord and I'm going to hook up to one of our outlets and drop the cord out the window to some parking spots in the garage beneath and charge it on my own. I'll offer to pay any extra power costs. He won't be happy about it, but you know what? This is important to me and its not like I'm demanding that he setup a $10k+ charging station.

What's your story and/or situation?
 
I work for a research institute that is part of and shares a campus with a children's hospital. We have 12,000 employees in the organization, but only 1,200 in research. We have only a handful of EV drivers and a few more plug-in hybrids. We have one Eaton charger in a research parking lot and an outlook calendar for users to book a slot for 4 up to hours at a time. The problem is that other parking is so remote, and the lot with the charger is close. EV drivers have access to this lot, but ONLY for the time they are charging. This makes charging at work a pain because you have to move your car in the middle of the day on or off the charger, then go park elsewhere and walk back. It has been here for 5 years now, and is pretty unreliable. It errors out a lot, but it's free.

We have a new garage, but they did not install chargers. Adding this infrastructure after the fact has been determined too expensive. Another garage is being built next year, and it will have 6 chargers with the ability to expand to 10 chargers as demand grows. I see this trend continuing for all future garages on our campus. I'm hoping they will be free. 8 hours of usage on 10 chargers would add up to less than $13,000 a year in electricity. The don't like "giving away free gas". These will probably be ChargePoint, and will have some sort of charge-back to the company. When they sign the contract, I expect that Eaton charger to be swapped out too. No more free charging at work.

If I want to charge at work now, I park in front of a wall outlet in the garage at work and trickle charge throughout the day. Over the course of an 8 hour work day, I get about 40 miles. - I have not asked about this, though I don't do it frequently enough that it bothers me. Once a month maybe. Its about 40 cents in electricity. If an when they establish a pay system, I would stop. At this point, I'd rather not open that flood gate for fear the answer would be no. :?

Do you have outlets in the garage?
 
I am not a fan of extension cords. Too much risk of someone tripping on it and hurting themselves, or pulling the cord enough to cause problems at the connection and causing a fire risk. There is also the problem of repetitive use of the connector and socket, and water entering the connector outside.
 
SageBrush said:
I am not a fan of extension cords. Too much risk of someone tripping on it and hurting themselves, or pulling the cord enough to cause problems at the connection and causing a fire risk. There is also the problem of repetitive use of the connector and socket, and water entering the connector outside.

Well, honestly, there's always going to be some form of a risk especially when you look at all Leaf owners many of whom charge in extreme heat as well as others that are in extreme cold. Doing the "ideal" situation of having an L2 charger at home and keeping it charged up to 80%, etc, etc isn't always feasible and definitely IS NOT for older Leafs like mine.

I'm certainly no electrician, but from my understanding, it's completely safe to have a 15 amp breaker at home running 100 feet to an outlet using 14 gauge Romex wire, so having a huge insulated 10 gauge extension cord at 50 feet should be reasonable. For me, it'll be plugged on one end inside and the other will go down along a wall in between 2 buildings and under cover going around the back and won't be in any walking areas.

That's about all I/we can do.
 
I work at a small college and we have a free charging station with 2 L2 chargers, which is pretty great. When I got my Leaf this summer I was the primary user; once in a while I'd see another car, always a PHEV (Volt, etc).

Now that the semester has started, there's real competition. There's another Leaf, and 3 or 4 PHEVs. Both chargers are occupied most of the time. The campus green initiative folks made up some signs for people to leave on the dash, saying when they'll be done charging, and inviting EV owners to unplug them after that. Ideally, those who are plugged in should move their cars after 2-3 hours but the realities of a full teaching schedule often make that difficult. There is room on either side of both charging spots, but neither of them are "legal" (one is on pavement with yellow zebra stripes, the other is on grass). I've already pulled up on the grass to plug in a couple times - no ticket but I don't know how far I could push my luck. We are currently asking the college to make those spots legit, but even then I can see the need for more chargers in the future.

Still, it's hard to complain about free L2 charging at work. In a pinch there's also a supermarket down the road with both L2 and CHAdeMO.
 
seonachan said:
I work at a small college and we have a free charging station with 2 L2 chargers, which is pretty great. When I got my Leaf this summer I was the primary user; once in a while I'd see another car, always a PHEV (Volt, etc).

Now that the semester has started, there's real competition. There's another Leaf, and 3 or 4 PHEVs. Both chargers are occupied most of the time. The campus green initiative folks made up some signs for people to leave on the dash, saying when they'll be done charging, and inviting EV owners to unplug them after that. Ideally, those who are plugged in should move their cars after 2-3 hours but the realities of a full teaching schedule often make that difficult. There is room on either side of both charging spots, but neither of them are "legal" (one is on pavement with yellow zebra stripes, the other is on grass). I've already pulled up on the grass to plug in a couple times - no ticket but I don't know how far I could push my luck. We are currently asking the college to make those spots legit, but even then I can see the need for more chargers in the future.

Still, it's hard to complain about free L2 charging at work. In a pinch there's also a supermarket down the road with both L2 and CHAdeMO.

It'd be cool if they had secondary charging cables, so that 4 people could connect to a charger (presuming there's room) and have the charging station split the power evenly or rotate after X number of hours.

My problem here in Chattanooga, TN is this. You go to ChargePoint and see like 30 chargers around and it's like "oh wow, awesome", but then you break down into it and see:

1) Stations at Hotels for Hotel Guests only
2) Stations at Parking Garages where it might cost you $7 to park there to get your "free" power
3) Stations at Restaurants where they unofficially require it to be customers only
4) Stations where EV spaces aren't enforced and taken up by ICE vehicles

And then, to top it all off, you have the "initiatives" that absorb a number of spots. So, for instance, there's "6 spots" available in a public parking area. Sweet, right? Except that 4 of them are reserved for some Sharing program. In a parking garage there's 2 spots, but only one for public use.

There's only a few truly free spots and not even many Blink pay charging spots available for public use. Grr.
 
I work at a hospital with about $7K employees. In a newer parking garage they installed 3 L2 GE WattStations. They are in an area not open to the public. Forward thinking on our orgs part to be green.

Currently only three of us charging. A few months ago there were 5 of us. We installed a dry erase board to leave notes about charging status, when okay to unplug, etc and we left our cell #'s to text if needed.

It costs $11.50 a week to park in the garage. Work is only 4 miles from home, so it's hard to make back that $11.50 a week in free electricity. That the same cost for any employee who parks in one of our garages. Our company seems open to adding more chargers should more people request them and the need arises. I would argue that even if they provided L1 outlets that would be good over 8 hours and cheap to provide. Most days I only charge for an hour or so to get back 25-30 miles of range, which I would get back over 8 hours on L1.
 
kirkhilles said:
Well, you know what? This is IMPORTANT to me, so this morning I'm going to do things MY way. I bought a 10 gauge, quality 50 foot extension cord and I'm going to hook up to one of our outlets and drop the cord out the window to some parking spots in the garage beneath and charge it on my own. I'll offer to pay any extra power costs. He won't be happy about it, but you know what? This is important to me and its not like I'm demanding that he setup a $10k+ charging station.

Unless you're in a kind of job where it's difficult to fire you, I would be VERY careful about doing this. It's been a few years, but someone here posted that they were FIRED for plugging into the work outlets without permission....and that's without using an extension cord, which presents hazards of its own (trip hazard, overheating, etc.). Others have gotten nasty-grams from their supervisors/bosses.

$60/month to use a parking lot with a charging station seems like cheap employment insurance to me.
 
kirkhilles said:
I'm certainly no electrician, but from my understanding, it's completely safe to have a 15 amp breaker at home running 100 feet to an outlet using 14 gauge Romex wire, so having a huge insulated 10 gauge extension cord at 50 feet should be reasonable. For me, it'll be plugged on one end inside and the other will go down along a wall in between 2 buildings and under cover going around the back and won't be in any walking areas.

That's about all I/we can do.
A couple of 'gotchas' to be aware of:

1. wire ratings may not be for continuous use
2. the weak link in extension cords is not usually the wire but the connectors ... which can have quite variable quality and are not rated for frequent use.

fwiw ... I am obviously a fan of plug-ins, but if I was your boss I would not let you use your extension cord setup. My workplace has also refused to let me use a 120v socket with my mobile EVSE so I feel your pain. Co-workers who live nearby offered me the option of running an extension cord into their homes but I thanked them and declined. I'm just not willing to take a fire risk.

My advice: find another solution
 
@kirkhilles There are some good resources here:

http://driveelectrictn.org/

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1076629_need-electric-car-charging-at-work-heres-how-to-get-it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQBVCkvMCUo
 
alozzy said:
@kirkhilles There are some good resources here:

http://driveelectrictn.org/

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1076629_need-electric-car-charging-at-work-heres-how-to-get-it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQBVCkvMCUo

Sweet, thanks!
 
Check out plugshare

Perhaps a neighbor will agree to charge up your car for the cost electricity
 
RonDawg said:
kirkhilles said:
Well, you know what? This is IMPORTANT to me, so this morning I'm going to do things MY way. I bought a 10 gauge, quality 50 foot extension cord and I'm going to hook up to one of our outlets and drop the cord out the window to some parking spots in the garage beneath and charge it on my own. I'll offer to pay any extra power costs. He won't be happy about it, but you know what? This is important to me and its not like I'm demanding that he setup a $10k+ charging station.

Unless you're in a kind of job where it's difficult to fire you, I would be VERY careful about doing this. It's been a few years, but someone here posted that they were FIRED for plugging into the work outlets without permission....and that's without using an extension cord, which presents hazards of its own (trip hazard, overheating, etc.). Others have gotten nasty-grams from their supervisors/bosses.

$60/month to use a parking lot with a charging station seems like cheap employment insurance to me.
I was going to say the same thing. There was someone who posted here that got fired. Definitely sucks.

I'm pretty lucky. My work has multiple L2's. Just added a few more and now almost everyone has one.
 
Well, in terms of "that guy" that got fired, I don't mean any disrespect to him or his situation but I wouldn't exactly call it a situation where lots of people have been fired. Here is my take on his situation (again: no disrespect to him): He gets a new job, gets some charging and then maybe they realize he doesn't work out and gets fired a few weeks later. I don't see how the charging has anything to do with it.

Look, I'm a software developer for a company for 11 years, so I'm not going to get fired over having my car plugged in. I'll get fired because of a bug in my code that costs my company real money, LOL. If I get fired because of charging my Leaf, it's because I burned the freaking office down because of an electrical fire.

I appreciate everyone's input, but I think everything is going to be fine. I'll need to find a way to better seal the window (since it's going out there right now) when it gets colder and I'll continue to do it daily until the boss tells me to stop.
 
kirkhilles said:
Well, in terms of "that guy" that got fired, I don't mean any disrespect to him or his situation but I wouldn't exactly call it a situation where lots of people have been fired. Here is my take on his situation (again: no disrespect to him): He gets a new job, gets some charging and then maybe they realize he doesn't work out and gets fired a few weeks later. I don't see how the charging has anything to do with it.

Look, I'm a software developer for a company for 11 years, so I'm not going to get fired over having my car plugged in. I'll get fired because of a bug in my code that costs my company real money, LOL. If I get fired because of charging my Leaf, it's because I burned the freaking office down because of an electrical fire.

I appreciate everyone's input, but I think everything is going to be fine. I'll need to find a way to better seal the window (since it's going out there right now) when it gets colder and I'll continue to do it daily until the boss tells me to stop.


You have to very careful charging in commercial and public locations where the EVSE is not provided for you to use. In most facilities, the permission of the person/entity paying for the electricity (usually facilities management company) is required, if it is not directly paid by the employer. There are also safety concerns to deal with, most likely covered by OSHA regulations. Extension cords are always an issue, especially one that is hanging out a window. Unless it is included as part of the compensation package, many will not provide free charging since it benefits only a few, and can be argued as an unfair advantage. Offering to pay for the electricity is a good first step. There are multiple reasons why permission may be denied. I would suggest getting written permission to allow charging.

There is a thread here somewhere. The person fired for charging at work, was let go for doing so without permission. It was at a government facility, if I remember correctly, or a government contractor.
 
I got authorization to plug into a single 120v outside outlet, unfortunately, both the parking spots that would be able to use the outlet without an extension cord are quite near the building/door, so one needs to be there quite early. This isn't/wasn't a problem because I start quite early, although if I went to lunch, I'd probably lose my spot. All was fine until the building got another Leaf owner, who started after me but still needed to charge. They went to the building management who to my surprise added not only a second dedicated 120v outlet but also a 30a L6-30 outlet at my suggestion. Now the other Leaf owner uses one of the 120v outlets, I use the 30a L2 with my portable L2 EVSE and we have a spare 120v outlet.
Unfortunately, my schedule has changed where I no longer work all day at this building all day but luckily I start my day there where I park for a couple hours and at 30a I can add ~60% to my 24kw battery, more than enough to make up for my trip to work. I kind of wish my battery would be larger to be able to accept a full charge for my whole 2hr duration but unfortunately charging starts to taper off at about 1.5hrs due to high SOC.
Living in MN, outside 120v outlets are/were quite common for people to plug their engine block heaters into and many of those could be 1500w or about what an OEM Leaf EVSE would draw but unfortunately, some people still look at it as getting free gas so it plugging in a EV could be frowned upon :(
 
kirkhilles said:
Well, in terms of "that guy" that got fired, I don't mean any disrespect to him or his situation but I wouldn't exactly call it a situation where lots of people have been fired. Here is my take on his situation (again: no disrespect to him): He gets a new job, gets some charging and then maybe they realize he doesn't work out and gets fired a few weeks later. I don't see how the charging has anything to do with it.

While that is quite possible (and indeed several of us at the time surmised it was just an excuse to let him go), if you're on shaky ground with your employer, why give them an excuse?

And you'll never know when you'll end up on that shaky ground. I've seen many people at my work go from "Golden Boy" to pariah overnight. In some cases it took nothing more than a change in leadership who didn't see that person in the same light as previously.

Anyway, just a heads up. Ultimately it's up to you if you want to take the risk or not.
 
We have an dual L2 EVSE at work. It requires card access. Employees who want a card are given one free, tracking their usage. We pay the company back monthly by mailing them a check. Our company has 150 employees and it seems to work out well. We haven't had ICEs using the spaces.

Bob
 
Personally if I were "the boss" and came in to work to see an extension cord dangling out a window for car charging, by a person with whom I'd already told could not be accommodated, It'd be about the same as hanging a banner that said "F U, Boss!". But you know the guy better than me so use your own discretion.

Perhaps more important are the safety and liability issues. Do you even know the ampacity of the circuit you'll be using, and what other loads are running off of it? The amperage demand of L1 charging is not trivial. This isn't like charging your cellphone. Do you want to be the one that trips a breaker destroying multiple peoples' work for the day, or perhaps taking down even more sensitive equipment? How would your boss react to that? What about starting a fire or setting off the smoke alarm?

Again, this isn't an inconsequential amount of electricity. Ethically you owe it to your employer to ask permission and to abide by their decision.
 
Nubo said:
Personally if I were "the boss" and came in to work to see an extension cord dangling out a window for car charging, by a person with whom I'd already told could not be accommodated, It'd be about the same as hanging a banner that said "F U, Boss!". But you know the guy better than me so use your own discretion.
This is exactly what I was getting at.

OP - You've already asked permission and got denied. It wouldn't be smart to move forward after being told no. Especially with an extension cord out of a window. Someone will complain and it will get back to you.
 
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